Sunday Food for Thought: Gore Vidal on American Democracy

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

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As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

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Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

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Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

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The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.